Praying in colour

Is it possible to pray in colour? That is exactly what Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci has been doing for the past four years.

The result of his supplications can be viewed at the Auberge d'Italie, in Merchants Street, Valletta, until April 10.

Called Mandala For Malta in Grey, the exhibition includes 41 mandalas, which are the prayers, and 38 oil and tempera works. The artist calls these latter pieces the foundations on which his philosophical heaven rests.

In Sanskrit, mandala means circle, which symbolises the manifestation of the eternal universe. A philosophy that derives from Buddhism, it suggests that persons capable of entering into a deep concentration can visualise this universality in geometric patterns.

"These patterns can be externalised in moments of profound concentration, visualising the manifestation of universal eternity," Mr Schembri Bonaci said. "The same philosophical line of thought is also evident in Byzantine icon art."

The artist studied icon art at the Grabar Institute of Icon Art in Moscow under Adolf Nikolaevich Ovchinnikov. Icon art and the principles of mandala led the artist to fuse the similarities between the two sources.

This is the first time Mr Schembri Bonaci has included Malta in his works.

"The mandalas are based on spiritual moments and spaces that are especially intimate to me where I feel this immersion, this baptism, if you like, of spirituality that feeds a thread that, like an umbilical cord, binds me to these places.

"These feelings are given a colour that fits that space. They are the colours representing my closeness with 'personal' spots from spaces in Mellieha, Gozo and Zurrieq, among others.

"In the end, what I paint is not the colour I see but more the internal colour I feel.

"The mandalas are represented in variations of grey because grey incorporates the brilliance of all the colours".

The mandalas displayed in the two lateral corridors of the ground floor at the Auberge d'Italie lead to an explosion of colour and a frenzied battle between Anubis on one side and the Greek god Pan on the other.

And, in between, hang pictures of the artist's wife Vera who seems to be trying to strike a harmonic balance between the two opposing camps. The ancient Egyptian god Anubis, shown as a man with the head of a jackal, was the god of the dead. Pan, on the other hand, is the god of fertility and carnal desire. He was depicted as a satyr with a reed pipe, a shepherd's crook and a branch of pine or a crown of pine needles.